Culture Wars/Current Controversies

The Return of Ta-Nehisi Coates

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In his new book, The Message, ten years after he first rose to fame writing about the legacy of slavery and racism in America, Ta-Nehisi Coates lays out the case that the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land is plainly unjustifiable — and that the American media has been complicit in occluding this reality. For our latest cover story, Ryu Spaeth, a writer and features editor for New York, spoke with Coates about Israel and Palestine, the trajectory of his career, and the relationship between American journalism and American power. In reading The Message, Spaeth was struck by the starkness of Coates’s argument, and by specific claims that seemed bold enough to break through the noise in public conversation — by Coates’s repeated likening, for example, of the conditions in the occupied territories to those in the Jim Crow South. The situation in Israel and Palestine, Coates told Spaeth, was far simpler than the media has portrayed it to be. The idea that it is “complicated,” he said, “is horseshit.” More than anything, Spaeth was struck by all that Coates appeared willing to lose. His new work seems bound to risk his relationships with people and institutions that previously championed his career.

—Katie Ryder, features editor, New York 

The Return of Ta-Nehisi Coates A decade after “The Case for Reparations,” he is ready to take on Israel, Palestine, and the American media.

Photo: Rob Stothard
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